> That's almost 3/4 of the 201,185 gain from 2000 to 2006. That was
> done mainly with political contributions and connections and not
> traditional organizing, right?
I think Jim's right that changes in accounting for fair share members caused the 200,000 drop in SEIU's reported membership on the LM2 from 2004 - 2005. Certainly it's not the experience at SEIU that the union lost members that year, nor is it confirmed by SEIU's internal membership report.
Looking at your time frame, on December 31, 2000 SEIU had 1,402,798 members, while on June 30, 2006 SEIU 1,740,022 members. These numbers are rigorous in the sense that they're based on per cap membership assessments. Also, increases in membership are not the same as the number of workers organized. The latter is usually greater than the former due to a number of factors. Newly organized workers don't become "counted" members because they're in right-to-work states or other non-agency shop environments and don't join the union, they're not able to negotiate a first contract and thus never end up paying dues, etc.
On homecare and childcare organizing, those campaigns were not traditional in the sense that SEIU had to exercise its political connections and pass ballot initiatives in some jurisdictions to establish an "employer of record." Outside of that, they were similar to other public sector campaign were there was minimal employer opposition and the workers didn't share a common job site.